Even though I’m a new member to the CNGA under the heading of a garden educator, I feel like I know many of you from years of plant shopping in the Denver area. If I haven’t shopped in your store I bet I know your store name or a friend who shops there. It’s a pleasure writing and sharing my plant shopping experiences and observations for the upcoming season.

I’ve never been in your shoes of growing large quantities of plants and ordering all the accessories from soil to hats that any level of gardener will want to put in their shopping cart and take home. It seems daunting and I must give you great praise for successfully keeping at it all these years while ebbing and flowing with the changing ways plants and products are sold. Between the internet, social media and mass merchant box stores, the adaptation curve must . . .

The word “power” seems an unlikely metaphor for gardening, however the energizing force of spring’s arrival creates a drive within us that is indeed powerful. What is so compelling about gardening that motivates so many of us to endure the aching muscles and dirty fingernails that seem to be a part of the endeavor?

Perhaps the most basic of our needs as human beings are somehow met in our interaction within these spaces that surround and become a part of our homes. Our gardens provide opportunities for creative expression, physical activity, a harvest of food and a connection to the forces and the beauty of the natural world. Every garden is unique as we are individually and this individuality gives us a power to  . .